Could you tell me if you’re cleaning out the chicken coop and aging it in the compost pile before you use it? I have chickens as well and I’ve just gotten my compost pile going. I’m not sure exactly what the best way is to add the chicken “fertilizer” to the garden. I’ve heard that direct adding will burn the plants.
@@KokoAcres yes, my coop and run are set on a hill. With a compost bin at the lowest point. Grass clipping, leaves and all. Starts in run area. Working it's way down to compost bin. I empty one wheel barrow out every Sunday. Move it to garden compost and work it for a couple weeks. Before moving it to compost. Ready for garden. Hard to beat fresh eggs and a wheelbarrow full of compost every week.
I'd love to have chickens...but I'm in a neighborhood within the city with very little actual yard and garden space. We've been making do with standard composting (I collect leaves from trees in a nearby gully - no pesticides or fertilizers are used there) and worm castings from our worm bin. I've become a BIG fan of worm castings!!!
I pot a bunch of flowers every spring as well as some herbs and odds and ends around the patio. At the end of each year I take that spent potting soil and throw it in my garden beds, and turn it in with about 2x as much high quality compost as spent potting soil to help aerate my heavy clay soil in all my in-ground garden beds.
I tried this in my back door this year. I did a patio garden. I used a bunch of potting and ground garden bags. My plants did not grow. I usually don't have a problem with tomatoes and cucumbers. This year they didn't mature . I am in a new house, didn't know where to put my garden.tried patio. Thanks for the info.
I find potting mix is much more expensive as well! Local compost has been more sustainable and less expensive. I also save my leaves at the end of season for leaf mold! Thanks for the tips Luke! 😊
This explains why my roses died when I removed the native soil and planted them in "rose mix" from the landscaping service. I noticed the rose mix was very woody. I asked them--after my roses died--in an effort to figure out what happened, if they had added fertilizer. They said they had added "chicken manure" and "worm castings." So I asked if the manure had been composted or was it fresh. They said, "added fresh from the farm." So I thought, well it must be too "hot," so I asked if they had a NPK or nutrient analysis. They sent me a report that showed very low nitrogen and high phosphorous and potassium. Now, I really was very confused! I believe the nitrogen was actually too Hot, but it was as you say sequestered due to all the wood chips and so it measured low in the analysis. I bought 8 yards of that rose mix. Now, I let it age for several months, and I'm sifting out the larger wood chips to use as surface mulch, and then mixing the fine parts in with my native soil for a better mineral composition. Live and learn. Thank you for the video. The more influential growers like you who expose this knowledge to us learning growers the more we will demand the proper growing mediums, and the more the suppliers will adjust to give us what we really need. Thank you!
Just hearing that first sentence let me know why my container garden is failing 😕 Same potting mix for two seasons because my crop kept growing so I only added fertilizer
@@brooklynnchickif you want the most benefits from worm castings, you really need them to be fresh. So ideally you would have your own worm farm. It's the living microbes that makes the difference. You will find it takes quite a while to get a good amount of castings, so you can make it go further by making an aerated worm castings tea and spraying that on. Or you could get several worm farms if that's easier. They are very easy to care for. Just be careful not to overfeed them.
Most alfalfa is sprayed, that herbicide is being passed on via livestock (cattle and horses) manure after digestion, be mindful where you source your pellets from. There are non GMO options out there, it's what we feed our animals.
@@deadeye3666 I bought alfalfa pellets to add to my Bermuda grass grown to help feed my horses! May try adding some to my containers! I hear it is a great fertilizer! The only problem I see would be mixing it in because the pellets are large.
Ive regrown in the same peat perlite blend re amended organically for over 10 harvest of cana now with no issues. Outside in my greenhouse in beds, inside in pots no issues. Mix your own soil. Buy bulk peat and perlite. 12 dollars for 4 cuft of peat. 35 dollars for 3 cu ft of perlite. Make sure you soil has aeration and nutrients and you will be fine in any medium. Re add some fresh peat, compost and perlite every year and turn your soil. Its cheap and easy.
I will try peat moss next year. Usually do potting soil, perlite, compost and bio char. I used to buy the raised garden mixes but they are full of wood chips and expensive.
Best year ever using ProMix bagged potting mix. 2 raised beds and tons of grow bags. Will use again next year. Also used for planting in cells. Great germination and healthy green seedlings.
Is what you are using what is sold in Walmart? I have a Sunshine brand of potting mix but the big box store I bought it from went to a much more expensive version. I just can't see spending $70 something for 3 cubic ft of mix!!!!
Promix is the way to go as a base for sure. In my raised beds I have 1/2 Promix, 1/4 coco coir and 1/4 compost to start off then every spring I add more compost there after. I do add worm castings and organic fertilizer when planting and my plants thrive all season.
I've since stopped buying brand name potting soils and just mix my own using coconut coir and compost. Much better quality for much less money by volume. The coir comes in dehydrated blocks and expands to almost double its weight with water. So much better.
I sifted all of the mulch out of my potting mix before the season started, for three straight eight hour days and I'm not even kidding, my neighbors thought I went crazy and was looking for gold. I can't wait to leave the suburbs. Didn't really know the science behind sifting it out just had a hunch it was probably filler. Cool vid. Also the results vs last year are night and day.
Why would you buy a product and then seize it? Just buy a different product. You can buy sand, compost, potting soil, planting soil, all of these for specific plant species, mulch, substrate, and much more.
@@Prometheus4096 Yeah and while he's at it why not just buy a bigger patch of land in a pristine fertile river valley and quit bothering with that clay laden plot in a subdivision. I imagine no one told this guy he can just buy his way out of life's hurdles and toss anything inconvenient in the landfill. Its so easy and obvious zipppity doo da zippity a.
Yep. That's me. The only thing that really did well was my cabbages. I've always had an in-ground garden, so I'm not as familiar with raised beds. A nursery close to me just started offering compost. I not only want to put that in my raised beds, I think it would help my in-ground garden as well. We just don't generate enough compost to cover everything, but I will continue to have a compost pile. Thank you for your expertise!
This video is great. And so needed. Especially for newer gardeners. I’ve seen so many pictures of failing tomatoes etc. and it was so obvious there was so much wood product in the soil. Compost compost compost.
When I amended my garden soil with humus and manure before planting, the plants did really well. When I didn't amend with anything, the plants grew poorly.
I use wood chips as a mulch on top of my beds and in pots. Just move the chips out of the way when working the soil. I live in the low AZ desert where clay is king and temps hot and dry. Woods chips are added everywhere! Keeps my soil moist longer and breaks down making great soil in time. Getting ready to get another load of chips,!
Because of you i stopped my neighbor from tilling fresh pine chips into her planting beds. It was used as top dress instead which im sure was a great benefit!
I actually use potting mix as the brown add to my compost pile . Just add it to your compost and break it down over a year or so. It works great after that.
I have been adding a 1/1/1 ratio of soil/compost/potting mix to my raised beds for several years. This year I was able to get compost at a discounted rate and I did not add potting mix. My garden did not do as well this year. I think it didn’t have enough air as the soil was not as loose as it normally is. My strike beans didn’t really push. My seeds took longer to sprout and grow and I didn’t get as much growth from the direct sow seeds. I am going to have to do a better job next year to fix the composition of my soil.Thanks so much Luke!
I used a mix of top soil and organic potting soil in my raised beds.. I added.. blood meal , bone meal, Azomite dust and fertilizer as well as I added worms .. my plants have been doing great now for 4yrs with no issues.. I always amend my soil every spring and fertilize every few wks
Luke could you educate us on mineral rich clay soil, the grass has been growing in it for centuries without depleting it, How good is it added to pots and raised beds etc?
So this sounds exactly like what I have been dealing with. This past spring I built seven 12’ x 4’ raised beds. Since my native soil is quite alkaline I bought bulk garden mix from the local nursery. After planting I noticed my plant were doing worse than previous years when I planted in the native soil. I was quite discouraged and decided to send a soil sample to get tested. The results were shocking to me, the garden mix had virtually zero nitrogen in it. I immediately amended the beds the best I could by scratching in 12-0-0 blood meal and since then the plants are doing much better. I guess my question is will amending with good quality compost next spring be the answer to getting the soil where it needs to be or do I need to also add some regular top soil along with the compost?
Too much compost can be as bad as too little, as it can rob nitrogen as well as oxygen. Plants may exhale oxygen but the roots need more than you could believe. Low nitrogen and low oxygen go hand in hand, and is especially true for clay soils (not to mention adding compost to clay soils can destroy a garden). Bone meal is a good addition but you could try to add the compost on top of the soil as a mulch in the next season, each can take a while to work into a form the plant can use. Foliar feeds can work very well in a pinch.
@@Ash-fd8ww This is the thing really, buying ready made 'allround (not perfect for any plant at all) substrates. People really should make their own according to the crops they require :) Bone meal, humus, guanos, composts, worm castings etc etc etc are all available and all more efficient and economical.
My native soil is rocks, gravel and sand. I’ve tried just compost, but in my new beds I used 1/2 sifted loam and 1/2 compost. I’m like that the loam gives the soil structure. Both methods have done well!
Wow, thank you for this information! I will be amending all my containers! I just bought worm castings and other different fertilizers. I have to make a point of adding fertilizers to my containers. Great explanation!!!!! I shared this with a friend!!!
I've transformed my clay soil with next to no organic matter (bare and washed out, no plants in it when i moved here) into healthy soil over four years with only compost and chop and drop of any crops transplanted in and the weeds that increased each season (no pulling, leaving the roots in place), and accelerated the improvement greatly in the two years that I've had goats and LOADED my beds with their manure and bedding. No store-bought amendments.
@@juneramirez8580 nine times out of ten, I'll let them grow until they're going to flower, then cut them down at ground level, so as to get the most mulch in place as possible. If it's a particularly large plant (I mostly deal with pigweed and lambsquarter) and just kinda crowding out my tomatoes or whatever, I'll cut it before that. Something like purslane I'll just let go, as it's a pretty good groundcover already. Add to this the regular cutting back of squash leaves to open up access to flowers and other leaves dying back, the soil stays pretty well covered until the next time I mulch with straw and manure. At this point the weeds mostly grow on the edges of the garden beds, so they aren't really in the way.
There are all kinds of materials in my 1m high raised bed. wood, sticks, garden waste, sand, clay, soil mix from a neighbor who built a foundation, potting soil, coconut potting soil and all the leftovers I could find. It just had to be reasonably cheap and my plants have been growing successfully in the mix for years.
Great video. Its an easy suggestion that manufacturers that make shop bought growing medium products also sell liquid feeds and artificial fertilisers. Mass farming suffers from this concept where you have to supplement each year with heavy nitrogen fertilizers (made very obvious by the supply constraints and price rises from the Ukraine war). Personal gardening can use compost, can recycle and can attempt to be more like a closed eco system. I'll use my spent growbags which I use for tomatoes as my "brown" complement in my compost bin or as a bulker for rich worm castings. I'm in the UK and woodchip seems to have replaced peat, so amending the shop bought mixes is now becoming essential, so much so that I'm really working hard on composting so I don't have to use them as much.
This is one of those videos where. You don’t realize the problem till someone says it out loud…after which your like of course. I think this is so common for new gardeners like myself because we just started making a compost bin the same year we start gardening so our first year is basically store bought potting mixes. This makes me more confident for next year.
There is something im surpised he didn't mention. Plant roots need a good amount of oxygen, and the woodchips in the potting mixes rob a lot of that oxygen, along with the nutrients. Any compost will do that, thats why you shouldn't mix it into garden beds too much. It's better if used on top as mulch through the season.
Potting mix lacks staying power. It's for starts and indoor plants only. Easily 80% of the soil I garden with is organic cow and horse manure, and chicken and rabbit manure that must have traces. There's composted wood chip, straw, kitchen and farm scraps. It's a luxury. Close to 5,000 sq ft of it and changing every year. Started from nothing 4 years go. My neighbor is a farmer with no time to garden but lots of room so we have a gentleman's agreement.
is the raised bed bagged 'soil' just as bad?? Some of the cheaper ones I have seen do have a lot of wood chips. This entire bagged 'soil' industry just seems like a scam.
the raised bed soil is worse. it is ground up fir bark and wood that will cause root rot. especially kelloggs. you're better off digging up you're own soil and throwing it into the raised bed, nematodes and all. its deffinately a scam. look into Gary Matsuoka. no one says it better than him.
Out in Calif. I use potting soils for growing my veggies in stock feeders or large wood nursery containers....but, I amend with 1/3 compost, 1/3rd sphagnum peat moss, balanced granular fertilizers, extra bone meal, garden lime, worm castings, etc. I feed my plants various liquid fertilizers over the growing season. I layer in the granular fertilizers as I build the soil up from the bottom of the container, so the container soil is like a representation of a cross section of how the great plains soil has been built up by nature over millions of years. I do all this extra work because the native soils are full of pollutants that have been dumped here over many many years of city building/rebuilding, and from all the military bases that were once here....and they dumped everything imaginable in the ground because, you know.....the govt. does what it wants.......
If you are already using a combination of potting soil, compost, worm castings, and organic granular fertilizer in your raised beds, is it reasonable to amend the soil each season with more compost, worm castings, and organic granular fertilizer?
I tried growing cucumbers for the first time this year and I wish I knew this sooner. Like you said, they started out great, but then most of my leaves started yellowing and I lost two of my plants completely. I'm not sure I'm even going to get any viable cukes this year. I got tons of blooms, but I've had to throw 3 out so far because they weren't any good (2 were on the vines that died). I have 4 or 5 growing right now, but they're small still. I'll know better for next year though. I'll just reuse that potting soil for indoor plants.
I also lost all of my cucumbers the same way! Fortunately for me the low AZ low desert allows a great fall and winter season to try them again. with more fertilizing sooner!
Very interesting. Being an old farmer i use dung for the garden. But we are being forced to no-peat compost and it's rubbish. To much woodchip. thankyou
Luke, if I don't have access to good native soil, can I use a mixture of bagged top soil and maybe a garden soil mix? Maybe with added peat moss, vermiculite and compost? My most basic question is about the bagged top soil. Is it just actual soil?
Oh my goodness this all makes so much sense! I’m assuming “raised bed mix” also would be in the same category as “potting mix” with the same results. So I amend with some compost and more raised bed mix and the tomatoes have done well but other plants just don’t thrive as I think they should. So I’m thinking I need to add more compost and mix in some more native soil? Also I tried mulching with pine shavings from tractor supply and I think it was a great mulch but it’s getting mixed in and hard to separate. Is this normal?
Be very careful of raised bed mixes. It is all shredded wood. That much organic matter in-situ (inside of the soil) can kill all but a few plants. Tomatoes and squash are evolved to live in pure compost, and that's why other plants may suffer from too much organic matter in the soil. We have all been lead to believe adding a lot of it is a good thing, when in reality it robs nutrients and oxygen and creates toxic sewer gases. Natural mineral soil is the best growing medium, always. Adding organic matter ontop is best. Foliar feeding helps plants in a pinch. A master gardener named Gary Matsuoka on YT has many videos explaining why this happens and how to fix it. The top layer of mulching (your pine shavings) mixing into the soil is normal. it just means its time for more mulch. I hope you have a good growing season.
@@Ash-fd8ww I really appreciate your feedback and wisdom! I’m a newer gardener and have had some success but not as much as I would think. I’m learning so much! And what you’re saying makes sense to me.
Probably the best video of ALL TIME FOR BEGINNER GARDENERS ❤️💪SAVES THEM THE HEARTBREAK CONFUSION AND EVENTUALLY GIVING UP GARDENING THINKING THEY ARE A "BLACK THUMB" WHEN RELYING ON ONLY THESE COMPANIES PRODUCTS RATHER THAN GODS AND DIY..KINDA SETS THEM UP TO FAIL👍🙂
Ok so let’s talk about the compost problem. For those who can’t make enough compost for their garden (me), and after my 2016 devastating loss of my entire 600sqft garden from aminopyralid contamination from outsourced compost …. Now what. My garden relies (successfully) on Trifecta+. Highly recommend. But … I’m bummed every year that I’m not comfortable with any outsourced compost because I know you’re right about all of this. Any recommendations for outsourced compost?
What about leaf mulch? I'm hearing a lot of people say they top their beds off with several inches of leaf mulch and plant in that mulch. How do you feel about planting in deep layers of leaf much?
If it helps, think about how a plant may grow in nature. It would grow out of a mineral soil and the leaves would fall onto the ground around the plant with the passage of time. Most plants do not like to grow in ground up dead plants (which is what these potting soils today are), except for orchids, tomatoes, squash and a few others. Leaf molds are like a sped up version of the leaf fall, you could say "digested" to the point where the nutrients are free to move through the soil and be picked up by plants, or the organisms in which the plants derive their nutrients. Deeper may not be better, but i think there is a happy medium. Professionals will say a mulch of 6 inches is best, but who can find that many leaves 😂😂? I hope this helps.
I can get inexpensive organic compost. Yes, it is a bit wood, but it's broken down pretty well and it's mostly humus. I mix with Black Kow soil and a sandy soil. So I get 50% organic compost, 25% Black Kow soil and 25% soil. It works well. I also add in a little bit of vermiculite for a little more water retention, as in a LITTLE bit, like about 1/4 cup of fine vermiculite for a few buckets of that mix. You can use amendments if you grow intensively, such as Azomite or a kelp based amendment and that puts the trace elements back into the soil. Even established top soil will need amending from high intensity gardening, and often times people who live in residential areas have poor quality soil as the company that developed the area took the top soil away before doing the heavy work.
Some potting mixes are fine, particularly with peat mosses etc that you can add amendments to rather than pre added. . Some plants thrive on 'fluffyness' haha so that comes down to its root system. Theres always been a saying for us organic farmers, "feed the soil not the plants" but people dont feed their soils. Folk should always make their own mixes, theres not one reason that benefits the plants to buy ready made soils :)
Well, my native soil is 80 % sand. Living in central East Florida is hard to find good native soil. So we have to relay in bags of dirt, compost with cow manure and others to fill my raise beds.
sand is the best growing medium in the world. you just need to irrigate it really well. dont dig in the compost just throw it on top of everything you want to grow. 3.75 gallons of water a day for tropical trees. speaking from experience. also be careful of manure, a lot of it is contaminated. if you have a clean source, then bless you.
That is the reason he said IF YOU HAVE GOOD NATIVE SOIL, BASICALLY FOREST TREES!!!! I live in the AZ low desert where clay fills my yard. I use wood chips as a topper everywhere I can on my acre! Keeps the weeds down, soil moist and builds the soil so it is better for the plants and me!!!
I tried this spring adding to my seedlings mixture and root rot results I'll never again. Didn't completely kill my plants but did only got about 70 percent of the growth until frost 😢
I use potting mix to help lighten my soil. The compost that I've been able to purchase is somewhat heavy and has little drainage. My garden is fairly young, I'm working on it. But for now, I have to use it.
I am a container gardener (on my balcony). Where am I supposed to get compost and native soil? I live in Ontario Canada. This is my first year gardening.
Love the channel FYI, So if I use wood chips to cover my soil in my raised beds to keep in moisture, do you suggest I remove the chips and just stay on top of watering for better results. You mentioned that the wood chips steal the nutrients from the soil. I have had pretty good results with the wood chips. Appreciate all the videos , any thoughts?
The chips only steal the nitrogen if you mix it in with the soil. Putting it on top works, you just need to remove what you can when planting then replace it! My plants do well in clay with wood chips topper and when they do break down the clay soil is much better. But it is a long time process, not a quick fix!
nice to see another gary fan. i like how he talks about ground up dead plants, lol. although MI forgot to mention how wood chips eat up oxygen though....
This is great advice. Potting mix is NOT soil (or what some professionals call "mineral soil"). Potting mix is usually just peat, perlite, and wood chips like Luke said. Whereas TRUE soil has broken down minerals (rocks that were eroded for millions of years), humus, microbiota (fungi, beneficial bacteria, protozoa, beneficial nematodes, etc), even charcoal (a result of natural wildfires). Trying to grow plants long term in potting mix is like trying to sustain your body solely on sport drinks, meal replacement shakes, and vitamin infused smoothies alone. There's a channel called Gardening in Canada where a soil scientist talks in detail about mineral soil vs potting mix.
you got it but reverse the order; wood chips are the FIRST ingredient, that's why it all ROTS, lol. I love GAC and they say the unaltered science. You might appreciate a master gardener on here, name of Gary Matsuoka. he is a master gardener that cracked this potted soil mystery years ago. his lectures are life changing for gardeners.
I bought the same topsoil from my major big, big stock store. So many wood chips and when I moistened it , it was spongy like a bog. I put it in three pots and those plants did horrible this year.
In Florida I cannot use native soil as our soil base is sand. I have used raised garden bed soil and compost. I am now dealing with bad nematodes in my garden and fire ants - they killed all my plants
I used borax, sugar and a little water. Put in a little container next to ant hill. It takes about 24 to 48 hours but they will all die. I’m sure there’s recipes for it online. It works great.
look into Gary Matsuoka. There are some potting mixes he has made, but one is pretty good and fairly light (35% peatmoss, 30% pumice, 20% perlite, 10% sand, 5% charcoal) that will work for years which you can make at home. you just need to use a liquid fertilizer, dynagro is the best one ive used. i hope this helps.
Luke, check out Coast Of Maine products. Super nice planting medium. I steer clear of M-G products as I got a BAD fungus gnat problem one year. They wiped out my garlic.
You consistently used the term “potting mix”, and I am just wondering about those companies which use the terms “growing mix” or “growing medium” and the term “potting mix” is nowhere to be seen on the bags or large “bricks” of medium. Two different growing mixes/mediums I used this year, had little or no wood chips/fragments in them like some of the products I had used in the past. Is there a difference between what you call “potting mix” and what some term as “growing mix/medium”? For one “popular” supplier of potting and garden soil mixes, which does a lot of advertising & marketing, I found that when I sifted out all the wood chips/fragments I got something a little more useable, which I then mixed with manure-based compost, perhaps some alfalfa pellets and/or some triple mix I bought in bulk. I know I need another infusion of compost in my gardens of clay soil, and hope to get 5 or 6 cubic yards before Winter sets in. I need to do that annually.
Bought 3 different brands of potting mix this year and they all had big chunks of wood in them. None of them looked good. Mixed it with half or more compost. The potted plants did ok. But not as well as those in the ground. I also add fertilizer 1 to2 times a months so they get some nutrients.
I try to turn my compost pile every fall. I have to add new stuff in the front til Fall cause I grow pumpkins and squash on top the pile on the summer.
Former high school science teacher and ecologist /biologist here. I know that the chemical compounds in wood can cause protein depletion in animals (I’ve seen elk starved to death with bellies full of pine bark or needles because the lignins block protein absorbed). Similarly, those compounds are long lasting and anti microbial (this is why Egyptian mummies are so well preserved, they’re coated with essential oils and saps pressed from trees)…so, when those wood pieces are in the soil are they killing the beneficial microbes and blocking nutrient absorption by the plants?
Thank you for your content… I am having a 4foot By 20 ft 18” deep bed (x2) for asparagus and Jerusalem 3 year artichoke crowns as my mother (79) is obsessed with the flavor and these vegetables… could you give me any ideas or suggestions for the bed soil, feeding, anything? I live in zone 7b in Western Nc altitude 2800 ft and it’s clay past 3-4 inches in the area FULL SUN for 8 hours starting about 11 AM - 8 PM through the summer
So i got these white eggs on the under side of my watermelon vines anybody know what that could be and how to get ride of them i got them growing in a raised bed with 2 different pepper varieties,a blueberry plant a passion vine and some Egyptian spinach underneath a shade cloth but the watermelon has overtaken the shade cloth so it had way too much foilage for me to check every square inch 😅
Hmm… Thanks for the info Luke, maybe this is something I need to consider. 2024 has, without a doubt, been my worst gardening year on record. I have two six-foot tomato plants that I still have yet to get a single tomato from, it’s just too hot, every flower dies and falls off. Even my cherry tomatoes are struggling and I still haven’t gotten one tomato from them. It’s weird, that’s never happened to me before. But, I am hopeful that Fall will bring better results. :)
Are you in California? My tomatoes struggled too, but I did get tomatoes before it got so hot. Now that it’s cooled down, I do see more blossoms and immature tomatoes.
@@peggywaters2589 Yes, I’m in the high desert of Southern CA. So I’m used to dealing with scorching summer heat, but no tomatoes at all is a new one for me. I’m glad to hear you’re starting to see an improvement with your tomatoes! I am looking forward to seeing better results in the fall. :)
My friends tomato is planted in this wood chip like potting mix, if I give her some compost and soil, can she just put it on top or does it need to be mixed in lightly?
Ok now I am freaking out. I am about to start my indoor salad bar and was going to do your homemade seed starting mix with coco coir after you said that compost invites mold and critters inside. So what do I do so my salad bar is ok?
I played with different soils or fertilizer for a few years. 4 chickens have done more than anything you can buy in a box or bag.
Could you tell me if you’re cleaning out the chicken coop and aging it in the compost pile before you use it? I have chickens as well and I’ve just gotten my compost pile going. I’m not sure exactly what the best way is to add the chicken “fertilizer” to the garden. I’ve heard that direct adding will burn the plants.
@@KokoAcres yes, my coop and run are set on a hill. With a compost bin at the lowest point. Grass clipping, leaves and all. Starts in run area. Working it's way down to compost bin. I empty one wheel barrow out every Sunday. Move it to garden compost and work it for a couple weeks. Before moving it to compost. Ready for garden. Hard to beat fresh eggs and a wheelbarrow full of compost every week.
@@jeffboelter1409 so you “age”it for only two weeks? If that’s what you’re saying then that’s very encouraging! Thank you so much for your reply!
Absolutely chickens 👍
I'd love to have chickens...but I'm in a neighborhood within the city with very little actual yard and garden space. We've been making do with standard composting (I collect leaves from trees in a nearby gully - no pesticides or fertilizers are used there) and worm castings from our worm bin. I've become a BIG fan of worm castings!!!
I pot a bunch of flowers every spring as well as some herbs and odds and ends around the patio. At the end of each year I take that spent potting soil and throw it in my garden beds, and turn it in with about 2x as much high quality compost as spent potting soil to help aerate my heavy clay soil in all my in-ground garden beds.
Yep. I use my spent soil to amend as well, especially for some heavy clay soil.
Ooo, what a great idea! I’ll have to give this a try. Thanks for helping me be a better gardener! ❤
I tried this in my back door this year. I did a patio garden. I used a bunch of potting and ground garden bags. My plants did not grow. I usually don't have a problem with tomatoes and cucumbers. This year they didn't mature . I am in a new house, didn't know where to put my garden.tried patio. Thanks for the info.
I've reused pro-mix for years, all you have to do is add some manure and other organic ingredients .
I find potting mix is much more expensive as well! Local compost has been more sustainable and less expensive. I also save my leaves at the end of season for leaf mold! Thanks for the tips Luke! 😊
This explains why my roses died when I removed the native soil and planted them in "rose mix" from the landscaping service. I noticed the rose mix was very woody. I asked them--after my roses died--in an effort to figure out what happened, if they had added fertilizer. They said they had added "chicken manure" and "worm castings." So I asked if the manure had been composted or was it fresh. They said, "added fresh from the farm." So I thought, well it must be too "hot," so I asked if they had a NPK or nutrient analysis. They sent me a report that showed very low nitrogen and high phosphorous and potassium. Now, I really was very confused! I believe the nitrogen was actually too Hot, but it was as you say sequestered due to all the wood chips and so it measured low in the analysis. I bought 8 yards of that rose mix. Now, I let it age for several months, and I'm sifting out the larger wood chips to use as surface mulch, and then mixing the fine parts in with my native soil for a better mineral composition. Live and learn. Thank you for the video. The more influential growers like you who expose this knowledge to us learning growers the more we will demand the proper growing mediums, and the more the suppliers will adjust to give us what we really need. Thank you!
Isn't it wonderful that there are ways to fix those problems!!!!
Just hearing that first sentence let me know why my container garden is failing 😕 Same potting mix for two seasons because my crop kept growing so I only added fertilizer
This is why I lavish worm castings on all my containers, it helps break down potting mix.
Where do you get your castings, or do I need to get into worm farming? 😳
@@brooklynnchick I get mine from MI Gardener.
@@brooklynnchickif you want the most benefits from worm castings, you really need them to be fresh. So ideally you would have your own worm farm. It's the living microbes that makes the difference.
You will find it takes quite a while to get a good amount of castings, so you can make it go further by making an aerated worm castings tea and spraying that on. Or you could get several worm farms if that's easier. They are very easy to care for. Just be careful not to overfeed them.
I adding wood pellets for moisture retention. My leaves were turning yellow. Thanks for the explanation.
Look into alfalfa pellet horse feed
@@Crashbangable will do, thanks for the tip
Most alfalfa is sprayed, that herbicide is being passed on via livestock (cattle and horses) manure after digestion, be mindful where you source your pellets from. There are non GMO options out there, it's what we feed our animals.
@@deadeye3666 I bought alfalfa pellets to add to my Bermuda grass grown to help feed my horses! May try adding some to my containers! I hear it is a great fertilizer! The only problem I see would be mixing it in because the pellets are large.
These mixes need amending, every time!! Adding manure really helps these mixes come alive
Ive regrown in the same peat perlite blend re amended organically for over 10 harvest of cana now with no issues. Outside in my greenhouse in beds, inside in pots no issues. Mix your own soil. Buy bulk peat and perlite. 12 dollars for 4 cuft of peat. 35 dollars for 3 cu ft of perlite. Make sure you soil has aeration and nutrients and you will be fine in any medium. Re add some fresh peat, compost and perlite every year and turn your soil. Its cheap and easy.
I will try peat moss next year. Usually do potting soil, perlite, compost and bio char. I used to buy the raised garden mixes but they are full of wood chips and expensive.
Where I live there stopping peat compost 😢 it's all peat free
Yep, I agree!!!! In my case I need to add more fertilizer!
@@lorainemcguire5795 I understand coconut coir replaces peat moss although I find that more expensive and I can still find peat!
Your comment is so helpful! Thank you for sharing your experience with new gardeners like me! ❤
Best year ever using ProMix bagged potting mix. 2 raised beds and tons of grow bags. Will use again next year. Also used for planting in cells. Great germination and healthy green seedlings.
Is what you are using what is sold in Walmart? I have a Sunshine brand of potting mix but the big box store I bought it from went to a much more expensive version. I just can't see spending $70 something for 3 cubic ft of mix!!!!
Promix is the way to go as a base for sure. In my raised beds I have 1/2 Promix, 1/4 coco coir and 1/4 compost to start off then every spring I add more compost there after. I do add worm castings and organic fertilizer when planting and my plants thrive all season.
I've since stopped buying brand name potting soils and just mix my own using coconut coir and compost. Much better quality for much less money by volume. The coir comes in dehydrated blocks and expands to almost double its weight with water. So much better.
The best potting mix I found has worm castings in it
potting mixes can be anything, you cant just bracket them altogether :)
This video blew my mind...I had no idea.
Really good video. A lot here I hadnt thought of before.
I sifted all of the mulch out of my potting mix before the season started, for three straight eight hour days and I'm not even kidding, my neighbors thought I went crazy and was looking for gold. I can't wait to leave the suburbs.
Didn't really know the science behind sifting it out just had a hunch it was probably filler. Cool vid. Also the results vs last year are night and day.
"I can't wait to leave the suburbs"
Ditto. My son calls the burbs a CIA experiment 😏
@@juliettedemaso7588 lol
Why would you buy a product and then seize it? Just buy a different product. You can buy sand, compost, potting soil, planting soil, all of these for specific plant species, mulch, substrate, and much more.
@@Prometheus4096 Yeah and while he's at it why not just buy a bigger patch of land in a pristine fertile river valley and quit bothering with that clay laden plot in a subdivision. I imagine no one told this guy he can just buy his way out of life's hurdles and toss anything inconvenient in the landfill. Its so easy and obvious zipppity doo da zippity a.
@@juliettedemaso7588 Wut? He already paid for it! He paid for it twice. First with money. Then with time.
hmmm .. I think you just resolved a primary mystery that's driven me bonkers... thanks so much for the info!
Yep. That's me. The only thing that really did well was my cabbages. I've always had an in-ground garden, so I'm not as familiar with raised beds. A nursery close to me just started offering compost. I not only want to put that in my raised beds, I think it would help my in-ground garden as well. We just don't generate enough compost to cover everything, but I will continue to have a compost pile. Thank you for your expertise!
This video is great. And so needed. Especially for newer gardeners. I’ve seen so many pictures of failing tomatoes etc. and it was so obvious there was so much wood product in the soil. Compost compost compost.
When I amended my garden soil with humus and manure before planting, the plants did really well. When I didn't amend with anything, the plants grew poorly.
Proof it works!!!!
I'm so glad that I watched this video now. I was going to go and put woodchips all over because the soil stays so dry because it's so hot these days.
Woodchips over the top may work well. Woodchips incorporated, no.
@@simonbrown8509 can't we just add a fertilizer with a higher nitrogen factor to make up for the chips?
I use wood chips as a mulch on top of my beds and in pots. Just move the chips out of the way when working the soil. I live in the low AZ desert where clay is king and temps hot and dry. Woods chips are added everywhere! Keeps my soil moist longer and breaks down making great soil in time. Getting ready to get another load of chips,!
My native soil is rocks with a very thin layer of 'dirt'. It's unfortunately impossible to dig in for garden purposes.
Because of you i stopped my neighbor from tilling fresh pine chips into her planting beds. It was used as top dress instead which im sure was a great benefit!
I actually use potting mix as the brown add to my compost pile . Just add it to your compost and break it down over a year or so. It works great after that.
I have been adding a 1/1/1 ratio of soil/compost/potting mix to my raised beds for several years. This year I was able to get compost at a discounted rate and I did not add potting mix. My garden did not do as well this year. I think it didn’t have enough air as the soil was not as loose as it normally is. My strike beans didn’t really push. My seeds took longer to sprout and grow and I didn’t get as much growth from the direct sow seeds. I am going to have to do a better job next year to fix the composition of my soil.Thanks so much Luke!
I used a mix of top soil and organic potting soil in my raised beds.. I added.. blood meal , bone meal, Azomite dust and fertilizer as well as I added worms .. my plants have been doing great now for 4yrs with no issues.. I always amend my soil every spring and fertilize every few wks
Luke could you educate us on mineral rich clay soil, the grass has been growing in it for centuries without depleting it, How good is it added to pots and raised beds etc?
So this sounds exactly like what I have been dealing with. This past spring I built seven 12’ x 4’ raised beds. Since my native soil is quite alkaline I bought bulk garden mix from the local nursery. After planting I noticed my plant were doing worse than previous years when I planted in the native soil. I was quite discouraged and decided to send a soil sample to get tested. The results were shocking to me, the garden mix had virtually zero nitrogen in it. I immediately amended the beds the best I could by scratching in 12-0-0 blood meal and since then the plants are doing much better. I guess my question is will amending with good quality compost next spring be the answer to getting the soil where it needs to be or do I need to also add some regular top soil along with the compost?
very possible, thats really what youre supposed to do
Too much compost can be as bad as too little, as it can rob nitrogen as well as oxygen. Plants may exhale oxygen but the roots need more than you could believe. Low nitrogen and low oxygen go hand in hand, and is especially true for clay soils (not to mention adding compost to clay soils can destroy a garden).
Bone meal is a good addition but you could try to add the compost on top of the soil as a mulch in the next season, each can take a while to work into a form the plant can use. Foliar feeds can work very well in a pinch.
@@Ash-fd8ww This is the thing really, buying ready made 'allround (not perfect for any plant at all) substrates. People really should make their own according to the crops they require :) Bone meal, humus, guanos, composts, worm castings etc etc etc are all available and all more efficient and economical.
I bought a composter this year can’t wait to try a pure oak leaf compost system
Can I come pick all those tomatoes in the background? 😂 Mine are done already and I am so sad😢
My native soil is rocks, gravel and sand. I’ve tried just compost, but in my new beds I used 1/2 sifted loam and 1/2 compost. I’m like that the loam gives the soil structure. Both methods have done well!
Wow, thank you for this information! I will be amending all my containers! I just bought worm castings and other different fertilizers. I have to make a point of adding fertilizers to my containers. Great explanation!!!!! I shared this with a friend!!!
I've transformed my clay soil with next to no organic matter (bare and washed out, no plants in it when i moved here) into healthy soil over four years with only compost and chop and drop of any crops transplanted in and the weeds that increased each season (no pulling, leaving the roots in place), and accelerated the improvement greatly in the two years that I've had goats and LOADED my beds with their manure and bedding. No store-bought amendments.
Please tell me how you weed your garden? Do you grow with the weeds left in place, cut the tops off to the ground, torch weeds? Thank you!
@@juneramirez8580 nine times out of ten, I'll let them grow until they're going to flower, then cut them down at ground level, so as to get the most mulch in place as possible. If it's a particularly large plant (I mostly deal with pigweed and lambsquarter) and just kinda crowding out my tomatoes or whatever, I'll cut it before that. Something like purslane I'll just let go, as it's a pretty good groundcover already. Add to this the regular cutting back of squash leaves to open up access to flowers and other leaves dying back, the soil stays pretty well covered until the next time I mulch with straw and manure. At this point the weeds mostly grow on the edges of the garden beds, so they aren't really in the way.
Thank you!@@milesfromnowhere1985
There are all kinds of materials in my 1m high raised bed.
wood, sticks, garden waste, sand, clay, soil mix from a neighbor who built a foundation, potting soil, coconut potting soil and all the leftovers I could find. It just had to be reasonably cheap and my plants have been growing successfully in the mix for years.
Great video. Its an easy suggestion that manufacturers that make shop bought growing medium products also sell liquid feeds and artificial fertilisers. Mass farming suffers from this concept where you have to supplement each year with heavy nitrogen fertilizers (made very obvious by the supply constraints and price rises from the Ukraine war). Personal gardening can use compost, can recycle and can attempt to be more like a closed eco system. I'll use my spent growbags which I use for tomatoes as my "brown" complement in my compost bin or as a bulker for rich worm castings. I'm in the UK and woodchip seems to have replaced peat, so amending the shop bought mixes is now becoming essential, so much so that I'm really working hard on composting so I don't have to use them as much.
This is one of those videos where. You don’t realize the problem till someone says it out loud…after which your like of course. I think this is so common for new gardeners like myself because we just started making a compost bin the same year we start gardening so our first year is basically store bought potting mixes. This makes me more confident for next year.
There is something im surpised he didn't mention. Plant roots need a good amount of oxygen, and the woodchips in the potting mixes rob a lot of that oxygen, along with the nutrients. Any compost will do that, thats why you shouldn't mix it into garden beds too much. It's better if used on top as mulch through the season.
@@Ash-fd8ww either way it still gets mixed into the soil in time
Potting mix lacks staying power. It's for starts and indoor plants only. Easily 80% of the soil I garden with is organic cow and horse manure, and chicken and rabbit manure that must have traces. There's composted wood chip, straw, kitchen and farm scraps. It's a luxury. Close to 5,000 sq ft of it and changing every year. Started from nothing 4 years go. My neighbor is a farmer with no time to garden but lots of room so we have a gentleman's agreement.
is the raised bed bagged 'soil' just as bad?? Some of the cheaper ones I have seen do have a lot of wood chips. This entire bagged 'soil' industry just seems like a scam.
This channel does have a video on bed soil, comparing many types however, in the end, they do not recommend it.
the raised bed soil is worse. it is ground up fir bark and wood that will cause root rot. especially kelloggs. you're better off digging up you're own soil and throwing it into the raised bed, nematodes and all. its deffinately a scam. look into Gary Matsuoka. no one says it better than him.
I buy composted cow manure and topsoil from a local greenhouse when I can't keep up with making compost.
Black soil/loam is scarce nowadays.
Out in Calif. I use potting soils for growing my veggies in stock feeders or large wood nursery containers....but, I amend with 1/3 compost, 1/3rd sphagnum peat moss, balanced granular fertilizers, extra bone meal, garden lime, worm castings, etc. I feed my plants various liquid fertilizers over the growing season. I layer in the granular fertilizers as I build the soil up from the bottom of the container, so the container soil is like a representation of a cross section of how the great plains soil has been built up by nature over millions of years.
I do all this extra work because the native soils are full of pollutants that have been dumped here over many many years of city building/rebuilding, and from all the military bases that were once here....and they dumped everything imaginable in the ground because, you know.....the govt. does what it wants.......
If you are already using a combination of potting soil, compost, worm castings, and organic granular fertilizer in your raised beds, is it reasonable to amend the soil each season with more compost, worm castings, and organic granular fertilizer?
I tried growing cucumbers for the first time this year and I wish I knew this sooner. Like you said, they started out great, but then most of my leaves started yellowing and I lost two of my plants completely. I'm not sure I'm even going to get any viable cukes this year. I got tons of blooms, but I've had to throw 3 out so far because they weren't any good (2 were on the vines that died). I have 4 or 5 growing right now, but they're small still. I'll know better for next year though. I'll just reuse that potting soil for indoor plants.
youre allowed to feed them ;)
@@PazLeBon I did... I'm guessing it wasn't enough.. I got some deep green leaves back, but it may have been too late.
@@ssb031 well gl, some plants are hardier than we expect ;)
I also lost all of my cucumbers the same way! Fortunately for me the low AZ low desert allows a great fall and winter season to try them again. with more fertilizing sooner!
Exactly what happened to me. Now I understand. Lots of work ahead.
Can you do a video from A to Z showing how to build and make your own compost.
Very interesting. Being an old farmer i use dung for the garden. But we are being forced to no-peat compost and it's rubbish. To much woodchip. thankyou
Thank you! I learn so much from your videos.
Luke, if I don't have access to good native soil, can I use a mixture of bagged top soil and maybe a garden soil mix? Maybe with added peat moss, vermiculite and compost? My most basic question is about the bagged top soil. Is it just actual soil?
Oh my goodness this all makes so much sense! I’m assuming “raised bed mix” also would be in the same category as “potting mix” with the same results. So I amend with some compost and more raised bed mix and the tomatoes have done well but other plants just don’t thrive as I think they should. So I’m thinking I need to add more compost and mix in some more native soil? Also I tried mulching with pine shavings from tractor supply and I think it was a great mulch but it’s getting mixed in and hard to separate. Is this normal?
Be very careful of raised bed mixes. It is all shredded wood. That much organic matter in-situ (inside of the soil) can kill all but a few plants. Tomatoes and squash are evolved to live in pure compost, and that's why other plants may suffer from too much organic matter in the soil. We have all been lead to believe adding a lot of it is a good thing, when in reality it robs nutrients and oxygen and creates toxic sewer gases. Natural mineral soil is the best growing medium, always. Adding organic matter ontop is best. Foliar feeding helps plants in a pinch. A master gardener named Gary Matsuoka on YT has many videos explaining why this happens and how to fix it.
The top layer of mulching (your pine shavings) mixing into the soil is normal. it just means its time for more mulch. I hope you have a good growing season.
@@Ash-fd8ww I really appreciate your feedback and wisdom! I’m a newer gardener and have had some success but not as much as I would think. I’m learning so much! And what you’re saying makes sense to me.
I’ve been adding wood chips to potting mix for YEARS 😅 I’m glad you told me, but I’m a little mad at myself right now 😅
Ironically these chips are great in the soil
@@PazLeBon they rob the soil of oxygen and nutrients and cause root rot :( but they work really well as a mulch :)
Probably the best video of ALL TIME FOR BEGINNER GARDENERS ❤️💪SAVES THEM THE HEARTBREAK CONFUSION AND EVENTUALLY GIVING UP GARDENING THINKING THEY ARE A "BLACK THUMB" WHEN RELYING ON ONLY THESE COMPANIES PRODUCTS RATHER THAN GODS AND DIY..KINDA SETS THEM UP TO FAIL👍🙂
Thanks for the information.
Ok so let’s talk about the compost problem. For those who can’t make enough compost for their garden (me), and after my 2016 devastating loss of my entire 600sqft garden from aminopyralid contamination from outsourced compost …. Now what. My garden relies (successfully) on Trifecta+. Highly recommend. But … I’m bummed every year that I’m not comfortable with any outsourced compost because I know you’re right about all of this. Any recommendations for outsourced compost?
So are you saying I should use ground soil as well as homemade compost, along with fertilizer??🤔
What about leaf mulch? I'm hearing a lot of people say they top their beds off with several inches of leaf mulch and plant in that mulch. How do you feel about planting in deep layers of leaf much?
If it helps, think about how a plant may grow in nature. It would grow out of a mineral soil and the leaves would fall onto the ground around the plant with the passage of time. Most plants do not like to grow in ground up dead plants (which is what these potting soils today are), except for orchids, tomatoes, squash and a few others. Leaf molds are like a sped up version of the leaf fall, you could say "digested" to the point where the nutrients are free to move through the soil and be picked up by plants, or the organisms in which the plants derive their nutrients. Deeper may not be better, but i think there is a happy medium. Professionals will say a mulch of 6 inches is best, but who can find that many leaves 😂😂?
I hope this helps.
You just solved my issues in the garden. Never thought about this. Explains soooo much! Grateful for this video. 🫶🏻
Best gardening advice of the year!
I totally agree!😊
What would you recommend for people growing in 5 gallon buckets?
I can get inexpensive organic compost. Yes, it is a bit wood, but it's broken down pretty well and it's mostly humus. I mix with Black Kow soil and a sandy soil. So I get 50% organic compost, 25% Black Kow soil and 25% soil. It works well. I also add in a little bit of vermiculite for a little more water retention, as in a LITTLE bit, like about 1/4 cup of fine vermiculite for a few buckets of that mix.
You can use amendments if you grow intensively, such as Azomite or a kelp based amendment and that puts the trace elements back into the soil.
Even established top soil will need amending from high intensity gardening, and often times people who live in residential areas have poor quality soil as the company that developed the area took the top soil away before doing the heavy work.
Some potting mixes are fine, particularly with peat mosses etc that you can add amendments to rather than pre added. . Some plants thrive on 'fluffyness' haha so that comes down to its root system. Theres always been a saying for us organic farmers, "feed the soil not the plants" but people dont feed their soils. Folk should always make their own mixes, theres not one reason that benefits the plants to buy ready made soils :)
What should we add to a container garden? I’m going to add worm casting. Is there anything else I should add to my potting mix?
Well, my native soil is 80 % sand. Living in central East Florida is hard to find good native soil. So we have to relay in bags of dirt, compost with cow manure and others to fill my raise beds.
That's very good 'soil' for growing tropical fruits such as mangoes!
sand is the best growing medium in the world. you just need to irrigate it really well. dont dig in the compost just throw it on top of everything you want to grow. 3.75 gallons of water a day for tropical trees. speaking from experience. also be careful of manure, a lot of it is contaminated. if you have a clean source, then bless you.
That is the reason he said IF YOU HAVE GOOD NATIVE SOIL, BASICALLY FOREST TREES!!!! I live in the AZ low desert where clay fills my yard. I use wood chips as a topper everywhere I can on my acre! Keeps the weeds down, soil moist and builds the soil so it is better for the plants and me!!!
@@0anant0 but you have to add fertilizers because sand washes nutrients away so fast!
@juneramirez8580 yes, need compost/fertilizer on top
Such great information, Luke! Thank you!
This is awesome information, TFS!
What about 'raised bed soil' from store? how does that compare with the potting mix/compost?
I tried this spring adding to my seedlings mixture and root rot results I'll never again. Didn't completely kill my plants but did only got about 70 percent of the growth until frost
😢
I use potting mix to help lighten my soil. The compost that I've been able to purchase is somewhat heavy and has little drainage. My garden is fairly young, I'm working on it. But for now, I have to use it.
I am a container gardener (on my balcony). Where am I supposed to get compost and native soil? I live in Ontario Canada. This is my first year gardening.
Thank you! This explains so much.
Great video Luke, very helpful. Thanks
Love the channel FYI, So if I use wood chips to cover my soil in my raised beds to keep in moisture, do you suggest I remove the chips and just stay on top of watering for better results. You mentioned that the wood chips steal the nutrients from the soil. I have had pretty good results with the wood chips. Appreciate all the videos , any thoughts?
The chips only steal the nitrogen if you mix it in with the soil. Putting it on top works, you just need to remove what you can when planting then replace it! My plants do well in clay with wood chips topper and when they do break down the clay soil is much better. But it is a long time process, not a quick fix!
so till the wood chip mulch into the soil, what can i mulch with in my veg garden that can be tilled into the soil after the season?
At the end of the season, I throw my potting mix and plants into my compost bin for the winter. I don't want to throw it away. Good idea or not?
Good info! Gary Matsuoka of Laguna Hill Nursery has an hour-long informative video on this topic.
nice to see another gary fan. i like how he talks about ground up dead plants, lol. although MI forgot to mention how wood chips eat up oxygen though....
Wow, I learn so much from you!! Thank you
This is great advice. Potting mix is NOT soil (or what some professionals call "mineral soil"). Potting mix is usually just peat, perlite, and wood chips like Luke said. Whereas TRUE soil has broken down minerals (rocks that were eroded for millions of years), humus, microbiota (fungi, beneficial bacteria, protozoa, beneficial nematodes, etc), even charcoal (a result of natural wildfires). Trying to grow plants long term in potting mix is like trying to sustain your body solely on sport drinks, meal replacement shakes, and vitamin infused smoothies alone. There's a channel called Gardening in Canada where a soil scientist talks in detail about mineral soil vs potting mix.
you got it but reverse the order; wood chips are the FIRST ingredient, that's why it all ROTS, lol. I love GAC and they say the unaltered science. You might appreciate a master gardener on here, name of Gary Matsuoka. he is a master gardener that cracked this potted soil mystery years ago. his lectures are life changing for gardeners.
I bought the same topsoil from my major big, big stock store. So many wood chips and when I moistened it , it was spongy like a bog. I put it in three pots and those plants did horrible this year.
Another excellent video! i so didn't know about that!
In Florida I cannot use native soil as our soil base is sand. I have used raised garden bed soil and compost. I am now dealing with bad nematodes in my garden and fire ants - they killed all my plants
beneficial nematodes might be used to get fire ants OUT of a garden :)
I used borax, sugar and a little water. Put in a little container next to ant hill. It takes about 24 to 48 hours but they will all die. I’m sure there’s recipes for it online. It works great.
@@melissakarner6707 Borax is not safe to ingest so dont grow food near it, i'ts toxic :(
Thanks for sharing !!!!! 😊🙏👍❤️
Thanks! 😊
How do you keep weeds out of your garden beds?
Potting mix is the only thing recommended for GreenStalks
I Use Happy Frog! Great product
look into Gary Matsuoka. There are some potting mixes he has made, but one is pretty good and fairly light (35% peatmoss, 30% pumice, 20% perlite, 10% sand, 5% charcoal) that will work for years which you can make at home. you just need to use a liquid fertilizer, dynagro is the best one ive used. i hope this helps.
Luke, check out Coast Of Maine products. Super nice planting medium. I steer clear of M-G products as I got a BAD fungus gnat problem one year. They wiped out my garlic.
So should I not mulch my container plants?
You consistently used the term “potting mix”, and I am just wondering about those companies which use the terms “growing mix” or “growing medium” and the term “potting mix” is nowhere to be seen on the bags or large “bricks” of medium. Two different growing mixes/mediums I used this year, had little or no wood chips/fragments in them like some of the products I had used in the past.
Is there a difference between what you call “potting mix” and what some term as “growing mix/medium”?
For one “popular” supplier of potting and garden soil mixes, which does a lot of advertising & marketing, I found that when I sifted out all the wood chips/fragments I got something a little more useable, which I then mixed with manure-based compost, perhaps some alfalfa pellets and/or some triple mix I bought in bulk.
I know I need another infusion of compost in my gardens of clay soil, and hope to get 5 or 6 cubic yards before Winter sets in. I need to do that annually.
Bought 3 different brands of potting mix this year and they all had big chunks of wood in them. None of them looked good. Mixed it with half or more compost. The potted plants did ok. But not as well as those in the ground. I also add fertilizer 1 to2 times a months
so they get some nutrients.
I try to turn my compost pile every fall. I have to add new stuff in the front til Fall cause I grow pumpkins and squash on top the pile on the summer.
This was an amazing video and tremendously valuable info! Thank you so much! New Sub here!
Former high school science teacher and ecologist /biologist here. I know that the chemical compounds in wood can cause protein depletion in animals (I’ve seen elk starved to death with bellies full of pine bark or needles because the lignins block protein absorbed). Similarly, those compounds are long lasting and anti microbial (this is why Egyptian mummies are so well preserved, they’re coated with essential oils and saps pressed from trees)…so, when those wood pieces are in the soil are they killing the beneficial microbes and blocking nutrient absorption by the plants?
Thanks
I filled my raised beds with compost, but if I get a plant with potting mix when it’s done growing I do mix it in to my beds.
Thank you for your content… I am having a 4foot By 20 ft 18” deep bed (x2) for asparagus and Jerusalem 3 year artichoke crowns as my mother (79) is obsessed with the flavor and these vegetables… could you give me any ideas or suggestions for the bed soil, feeding, anything? I live in zone 7b in Western Nc altitude 2800 ft and it’s clay past 3-4 inches in the area FULL SUN for 8 hours starting about 11 AM - 8 PM through the summer
So i got these white eggs on the under side of my watermelon vines anybody know what that could be and how to get ride of them i got them growing in a raised bed with 2 different pepper varieties,a blueberry plant a passion vine and some Egyptian spinach underneath a shade cloth but the watermelon has overtaken the shade cloth so it had way too much foilage for me to check every square inch 😅
My garden soil looked worse than that. So many wood chips. Will NEVER go that route again.
Hmm… Thanks for the info Luke, maybe this is something I need to consider. 2024 has, without a doubt, been my worst gardening year on record. I have two six-foot tomato plants that I still have yet to get a single tomato from, it’s just too hot, every flower dies and falls off. Even my cherry tomatoes are struggling and I still haven’t gotten one tomato from them. It’s weird, that’s never happened to me before. But, I am hopeful that Fall will bring better results. :)
Are you in California? My tomatoes struggled too, but I did get tomatoes before it got so hot. Now that it’s cooled down, I do see more blossoms and immature tomatoes.
@@peggywaters2589 Yes, I’m in the high desert of Southern CA. So I’m used to dealing with scorching summer heat, but no tomatoes at all is a new one for me. I’m glad to hear you’re starting to see an improvement with your tomatoes! I am looking forward to seeing better results in the fall. :)
Thank you great explanation.
My friends tomato is planted in this wood chip like potting mix, if I give her some compost and soil, can she just put it on top or does it need to be mixed in lightly?
Loved listening to this.
I feel like my garden tower hasn't done very well due to the use of potting mix recommended by the manufacturer.
Thank you.
Ok now I am freaking out. I am about to start my indoor salad bar and was going to do your homemade seed starting mix with coco coir after you said that compost invites mold and critters inside. So what do I do so my salad bar is ok?
Thank You!
would adding NPD 20-20-20 help if i were using a big box store potting mix? that and a regular daily drip irrigation